Finland’s Maisa Kuusikko became the first Finnish gymnast to compete in the all-around final. Not only that, but she finished in the 13th place after qualifying to the final in 29th. For the 17-year-old Kuusikko this was her second World Championships but last year, she only competed on bars and did not have a great competition.
She gained quite a lot of experience at international competitions, however. She finished 13th in the all-around final at the 2021 European Championships and 11th this year. Her talent attracted attention already when she was a junior, but she missed out on the Tokyo qualification because she turned senior only in 2021 and was not eligible for the 2019 Worlds.
Kuusikko said she was excited to compete in front of such a big crowd in Liverpool:
“It was just so amazing and i feel so happy right now. I have never been in front of such a big crowd, so it was just amazing. I had some improvements to do but I didn’t expect this [to finish 15th] at all.”
Finland placed 10th at the European Championships and qualified a full team to Worlds and Kuusikko was excited about that:
“That was just so amazing and it’s really nice to see the whole team Finland improve so much and we have this amazing team right now, so I’m just really happy about that.”
She has a 6.0 difficulty on bars but so far, her international medals came on beam and vault, she won gold on beam at the Szombathely World Cup and bronze on vault and silver on beam at the Varna World Cup. She believes bars is her best event – “If I hit that routine well” – but says she loves beam no less than bars.
